Issue BriefsPublished on Sep 13, 2023 PDF Download
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Youth and Radicalisation: The Threat to India

In common discourse on extremism, it is widely thought that the poor and unschooled are most easily recruited to militant organisations. Today, however, an increasing number of young professionals are embracing extremism. Is this true for India? If such a pattern is indeed present, what threats does it pose to India?

In common discourse on extremism, it is widely thought that the poor and unschooled are most easily recruited to militant organisations. Today, however, an increasing number of young professionals are embracing extremism. Is this true for India? If such a pattern is indeed present, what threats does it pose to India?

There is a notion that extremist movements in various parts of the world recruit their followers from only amongst the poor and uneducated. Recently, however, anecdotal evidence offers a contrary view: Radicalisation is not the monopoly of the unschooled and economically deprived. The number of young professionals joining or pledging allegiance to extremist and jihadist movements and organisations is on the rise.

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), one of the main jihadist groups fighting government forces in Syria and Iraq, has a number of members who are young professionals managing the group’s refineries, banking, communication and other infrastructure requirements. ISIS was formed in April 2013 with the merger of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s forces in Iraq and Syria; it was first named the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). Growing out of al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), it has since been disavowed by the militant organisation.

Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda chief and one of the masterminds of the 9/11 US terror attacks along with Osama bin Laden, may yet be the best illustration of how a highly educated person—who would, presumably, have a flourishing professional career and the whole world before them—can choose to take a path of terror. Al-Zawahiri is a trained surgeon. Indeed, it has been estimated that an increasing number of al-Qaeda recruits are either college educated or were engaged in skilled professions before recruitment. The Lashkar-e-Tayyeba, a global terrorist group based in Pakistan, has professionals on its rolls: engineers, doctors and technicians, among them. Most of them are either alumni of colleges and institutes run by the group or employed in the hospitals and engineering colleges operated by their affiliates.

In India, the Indian Mujahideen (IM) has drawn its recruits from urban and educated backgrounds.
So has the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), another organisation linked by authorities to terrorist activities in the country.

Recent reports about a group of Indians joining the ISIS have raised concerns about the possibility of an increasing number of young professionals joining global jihadist groups. Such presence of Indians among the ISIS cadres is a significant departure from the past: Although Indian nationals have been involved in terrorist attacks within the country, there has been no case of any one joining al-Qaeda or any other global terrorist group. Some argue that in India, the jihadist movement is not an outcome of a particular interpretation of sacred Islamic texts and does not concern itself entirely with the religion. Rather, it is the outcome of dissatisfaction over political and social issues, and it appeals the most to certain classes of youth. These issues, combined with religious conservatism, may lead to jihadist tendencies. This is a subject that calls for closer examination.

This paper raises the following questions:

(i) Is there a marked trend among young Indian Muslim professionals to be drawn towards terrorism?;

(ii) Is there a noticeable tendency towards joining global jihadi causes?;

(iii) What will be the nature and extent of threats that these tendencies, if present, pose to India?

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